Zigbee Power Level Settings

[jvm33]

In the Zigbee Details / Zigbee Channel and Power settings, there's an option to set "Current power level" which, on my hubitat, defaults to 16 but allows up to 20.

I live in an area where houses are spread out a bit, so there's little interference from neighbors. Any reason not to up the power to 20?

[mavrrick58]

One item i read a little bit ago was that it can interfere with WIF if it is close to your router. So you could try it out and if your 2.4ghz wifi starts to run poorly then look at turning it back down. That same thread called out that 16 is twice as powerful as what the C7 did so you are already getting more power from it.

[brad5]

Honestly I'd keep it at 16. As @mavrrick58 points out the C7 was at 8 so you're already getting double the output, plus the additional benefit of the external antenna. As the power output of the radio increases so does its sensitivity, which makes it theoretically more susceptible to interference.

I ran mine at 16 for a while, then dropped back down to 8, and it's been pretty happy.

See thread here for add'l discussion

C-8 -- new Zigbee radio Power option

@mike.maxwell... Can you please give a quick breakdown of the new power options available for the C-8 zigbee radio? I've heard some folks here say that "8" is similar to the C-7's output, but does that rule-of-thumb include the boost from the C-8's ext antenna or not? If "8" is a comparable setting, why does the C-8 default to "16"? Do you have any general recommendations for when to use which setting (or any gotcha's to consider with respect to each setting)? Thanks!

[jvm33]

Thanks all! (I didn't even realize this was a new C8 setting - I just assumed I had never noticed it on my C7!).